


second time around

by newbie1990



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: (Rabadash not Susan), F/M, Gen, Reincarnation AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 04:38:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16847278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newbie1990/pseuds/newbie1990
Summary: susan and rabadash, again.





	second time around

she isn’t sure how she ended up here. she is trying, trying, Making Her Way In Society, charming men, and yet nothing fits, nothing she finds or does is ever quite what she’s been wanting. it itches, it itches like a healing wound but the funny thing is the wounds never *do*.

war does things to people, loss changes a face. she understands it too well, it draws her in. she’s never quite comforting. her voice can be soft and her kindness sweet, but the anger burns and burns and burns and she never says it’s all right when it can’t be.

perhaps that explains it. perhaps not. but she sits by bedsides. it is a thing, now, that women of good repute do, sitting with those so broken and battered by the war they never stood up again.

the first time she sees him, she’s shocked. it’s like a face from a dream catching your eye on a crowded street, a face from a film. and then it passes, the feeling, as if it was never there, but she remembers. she remembers, and she feels unease, and she manages with her sly diplomacy to avoid him.

until of course she doesn’t. until he calls her and asks her to help him take a turn around the room. until she has no choice.

the weight of him is strong and warm and so disconcertingly familiar. he smells like something from childhood, a trip to a foreign land long-forgotten. he talks slow and gentle, and his face is kind until the day she sees him laugh at a joke another soldier makes, and the smirk, the snort - her chest seizes up. it hurts. she walks into the corridor and breathes and breathes the clean air.

he is from one of the colonies. he signed up too young. he survived pretty well, injured late in the war. he’s bounced from place to place until he ended up here. she doesn’t know him. she breathes. the world settles back into place again.

~

everyone deserves a second chance. whether aslan is merciful is a question for the ages, and whether this is mercy is quite another still, but everyone deserves a second chance. that much is clear.

~

he is born in 1924. his father makes clothes. it’s strange, the way a life can build a person. how kindness and cruelty can be taught to a child. in another life, he was spoilt, the world in the crook of his finger. in another world, grown men would dance like fools for his amusement. once, he dreamt of a man he didn’t know praising him for throwing soup in a servant’s face. they didn't add enough spice.

he woke up and it took him three minutes to breathe properly. he ranked it amongst the nightmares of gunfire and screaming, before he learned what those really sounded like.

his parents are kind and small and warm and what they expect of him is *goodness*. he sees the small injustices in the world, and they weigh on his parents’ shoulders, on his shoulders, and he is not (never) the one pouring them out. things go differently from there.

war is still an adventure, bravery is still in his blood. the urge to impress, for the prettiest girl in the village to watch him with wide eyes when he returns a hero.

here is the part where we begin to wonder about mercy. he sees things no child’s eyes should see. he doesn’t think of himself as a child, not yet. he thinks of himself as scared, as foolish, as so very green.

~

the first time he flirts with her, her heart races and she can’t figure out how many parts it is pleasure and how many parts fear. she has no reason to fear him now, no reason but the memories that aren’t memories tugging on her thoughts. they’re like little weights, like the promise of something impossible.

susan learned a long time ago not to hope in the impossible. it leaves you with nothing but disappointment.

the impossible can never quite seem to let her go. it clings to her, greedy, and her steps wind their way into the chapel she loathes most in all the world. she never hates God more than in here, and she never feels closer to him.

it’s strange, really, that she never can, never wants to believe in God except on the days when the rage burns so bright it needs to find a target. she won’t let it be her, this is *not her fault*, was never her fault and never will be.

and today it’s more than God in her head, it’s the lion of judah, the lion the symbol of a nation she hasn’t felt a citizen of for years, and she can’t believe how foolish they were as children.

‘…you took them away to punish me, you took them away so that i would come back then that’s on *you*, that’s your selfishness, your pettiness, your - ‘

‘you have forgotten me well, child,’ breathes a voice, and the air is golden and warm and she stands up and walks out. she does not once look back. looking back has never done her any good.

she cries so hard that night she can’t breathe. some days, she can hardly forgive herself for still wanting it all back.

~

everyone deserves a second chance. perhaps even God.


End file.
